Tiny Prayers
by blue mood blue
Summary: At 9:38 on a Tuesday morning, Kurt was in a car accident. It took the length of one minute to change every plan he'd ever made. It took a little longer, and some help, to realize that his life was not one of the things he'd lost.
1. Prologue - 9:28

Prologue - 9:38

_"Every plan is a tiny prayer to father time."_

There's an old adage that starts circling around when bad things happen. "Life isn't fair" – it's a useless grouping of empty syllables, worn down as they are with overuse. It isn't life that's unfair – the existence of a pulse in a person doesn't single one out for bad luck. People are unfair – life just gives a person more to lose.

At 9:38 on a Tuesday morning, at the intersection of Alder and 2nd Street, a minivan barreled into the side of a car. The minivan ran a red light; the car was making a turn through the intersection. In the next instant, it caught the car by the middle and sent it spinning. Before the minute was over, the screeching had come to a stop. The driver of the minivan hadn't stopped, relatively unharmed; the empty baby carrier strapped onto the backseat hadn't slipped so much as an inch. The driver of the car was in worse condition, trapped and bleeding on the inside curve of the crude crescent bent into the side of the car.

The driver of the minivan was drunk. The boy in the white car was Kurt Hummel, a senior at McKinley High; he'd been on his way to pick up some groceries for his stepmother.

So it wasn't the debatable unfairness of life that handed Kurt Hummel head trauma along with a slew of other injuries. He didn't wake up one morning to find the back of his head bleeding. The impact of the minivan at the angle it struck gave Kurt head trauma. Every last bottle that the other driver downed had given Kurt head trauma, as well as the slow-moving vehicle turning in front of him, and the flat tire on Kurt's Navigator, Carole's grocery list, and the habit of giving students a break from school during winter. One might point to these elements and find some conspiracy of the universe, but the simple fact remains that luck (or fate, or fortune, as you would have it) is determined by nothing more than a series of coincidences that are nearly impossible to predict.

It was Finn who first got the call on Burt's cell phone that had been left at home. There was a woman's voice gently asking for his stepfather, and Finn tried to place it because he was almost certain he recognized the number, but he came up blank. When he told the woman that he couldn't get to Burt, she told him that there had been an accident and that Kurt was in the hospital.

Finn's brain kind of cut out, and all he could think about was how it was Christmas, almost, and things like that just didn't happen on Christmas. The glee club was trying to organize a get-together for the holiday and he'd just started to convince his little brother to wear a tacky sweater with him. He couldn't be in the hospital. Kurt would never miss an opportunity to be with his friends, so he couldn't be in the hospital right now. Kurt didn't let people hurt him. There must have been a mistake.

It took him a second to snap back to reality. "I'll tell him. I'll be there."

He had to call Rachel after that, since they were short a vehicle; her protests about previous plans dried up when Finn mentioned he needed to get to the hospital. They were almost there before the phone on Finn's lap began ringing again. Burt wanted to know where he was and if he'd heard. Carole was waiting for them by the ER entrance. For the love of God, please drive safely.

Rachel didn't ask until they were pulling into the hospital's parking lot. When Finn told her she was very pale and quiet and he worried that she might pass out before they left the car but instead she just took his hand and ran to the ER with him.

Carole didn't know any more than they'd been told, but she did explain that Kurt was already in surgery as they entered the elevator. The air felt compressed, like it was hard to breathe. _This couldn't be happening. Not now, not to Kurt. _Finn's mind kept flipping through strange, unrelated thoughts as though throwing random bits of information to the forefront would distract him from the horrible wrenching feeling that was happening somewhere between his heart and the bottom of his throat.

They spent hours in the uncomfortable waiting room while Carole went to find out what she could. It had windows and Finn felt very exposed. They were quiet except for the sound of some morning talk show playing on the ancient television mounted to the wall.

Finally, sometime that afternoon, probably, a doctor came to see them. He talked about a lot of complicated things to do with Kurt's brain and honestly, Finn didn't hear much around the sudden muffling of his hearing, as good as if he was holding hands over his ears. It was just as well – he didn't want to think about any of it yet.

Burt asked a question. "You can go in now, Mr. Hummel; he's still in Intensive Care, so just one visitor at a time."  
Rachel and Finn sat back down as Burt and the doctor left. Rachel pulled her phone from her pocket with shaking hands. "I should… I should call Blaine. He'll be so upset if he hears it from somewhere else, and I'll have to call Mercedes and Brittany…"  
Finn placed a gentle hand over hers, lowering it from where she'd almost already raised it to her ear without dialing anyone. "Not until you're ready, okay?"  
She glanced between him and the phone. "Blaine at least," she insisted, taking a deep breath. There was no one else with them in the waiting room, so Rachel didn't bother stepping out.

"Blaine? Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize… May I speak to Blaine, please?" Blaine was out of town for the week with family; Finn wasn't sure what good it would do to tell him now, but it was true that he would be upset to hear about what happened to Kurt through gossip. "Hello? Blaine? Yes, this is Rachel. Oh, I'm… fine, how are you? …that's good, I'm glad things are going well for you…" The attempt at cheer in Rachel's voice was painfully forced, and Finn held her other hand without thinking about it. In seconds, her grip was impossibly tight like if she wasn't holding on to something she might fall. Her voice was tight, too, holding the emotion back. "Listen, I'm calling about Kurt. No, he's not mad at you, he just… Blaine, Kurt was in an accident this morning."

It was silent for a moment. Finn listened closely; he didn't think Blaine was saying anything. He caught the tail end of what might have been a whispered question.

Rachel choked on a sob. "No, he's… he was in surgery all morning and he's in a coma now, and… the doctor said if – _when_, when he wakes up… he hit the back of his head really badly. And, um, the doctor thinks that he has, uh, cerebellar damage, so… so he might not be able to talk or move very well. We'll have to wait and see, but… but it doesn't look good, Blaine."

The fuzz in Finn's ears was sharpening into a ringing, and suddenly the waiting room felt impossibly cramped. He wanted to make a run for the elevators, to reach the air outside so he could breathe, but he couldn't leave Rachel there alone.

"Yeah, I'll let you know if we hear something. Mr. Hummel is in there now, they're only letting one person in at a time, but… yeah, I'll call you back. I'm so sorry, Blaine. I'll call you back." She hung up the phone and stared at it.

"Do you want me to call the others?"

"He was crying, Finn." She took a shaky breath. "I ruined his Christmas. I can't…"

Finn gently pried her phone out of her hand and placed it on the table amid the outdated magazines. Without a word, he started dialing Puck's number on Burt's phone. Even as he spoke, the ringing stayed in his ears until Carole tapped his arm and said it was time for them to go home.

There's a feeling a person sometimes gets, when they get home from being away, that something in the house is missing. It's not that anything is actually gone, it's just that suddenly the space doesn't feel like it's supposed to. Maybe you notice that the painting in the living room is faded, or the tablecloth has a spot you don't remember; any other day it's just a part of your life, but on that day, you are a stranger looking in, catching the details of someone else's life, and that familiar warmth of being somewhere you know is absent. For just a second – a brief, tiny instant – time has moved without you and you are on the outside of that glow that is home.

The house, the newer one with two stories and bushes in the front, with separate bedrooms and the dishes still in the sink, the one with a rocking chair on the little porch and the rug with the stain from the first Thanksgiving dinner held by two halves of what was going to become a less-broken family, felt just like the waiting room. Carole suggested softly that Finn should get some sleep, but she didn't argue when he sat next to her on the couch. She had the house phone and her cell phone on her lap just in case.

They waited. Maybe for some news, but mostly for permission to forget for a while. The world outside the front door was everything it had always been, but it had left Finn and his family behind.

The waiting turned into a routine. Burt would visit in the afternoon, or Finn, or Carole. Mr. Schue would make a polite inquiry in class and Finn would answer briefly. He'd get home and stare at the scarf hanging on the coat rack, knowing that Kurt would have a fit if the material stretched and wondering if he should take it down and fold it. The Navigator stayed in the garage – no one wanted to drive it.

For a while, the New Directions rallied their strength. They couldn't sing in the ICU, so they sang in the lobby. Brittany looked for every good-luck charm she could find, and Blaine brought new flowers to the room every week. It was always "when Kurt wakes up." When Kurt wakes up, he's going to be so upset that he missed the glee assignment. When Kurt wakes up, we'll have to tell him about what Brittany said to Mr. Schue. When Kurt wakes up, it'll feel okay to sing again.

Finn was at school, in fifth period, when he was called to the office. His mom was waiting for him, and just a second after that initial flash of fear – _they were wrong, it wasn't enough, he's not waking up_ – she hugged him and told him that Kurt was awake.

Awake and immobile. Still and quiet, because when he would try to speak, his mouth wouldn't cooperate, or his arms and legs. He was confused a lot in the beginning, but his memory was okay because Finn always knew that Kurt recognized him when he walked in the room. Finn couldn't say how; it was a sibling thing, probably. And when he'd hold Kurt's hand, his brother's grip was so tight that Finn knew Kurt understood what he'd lost. Whenever that happened, Finn would tell him some funny story from school or gossip until the younger boy's grip loosened a bit.

After a while Finn didn't talk so much about school. Their friends didn't seem to realize that the boy in the bed was still Kurt. They tried to visit – Rachel talked the entire time, every time, in an attempt to fill the silence, while Santana, for perhaps the first time, appeared to have nothing at all to say – but they looked so scared. They weren't ready to see Kurt like that. There were excuses and the visits stopped. Finn didn't get angry, but he didn't have much to say to any of them.

Blaine brought flowers when he visited and mostly just sat quietly, holding Kurt's hand and sometimes looking at him. He lasted longer than most, but one day Finn heard that he'd transferred back to Dalton. Finn caught Kurt staring at the last arrangement of flowers, red and yellow roses; it was the first time since the accident that he'd seen his little brother cry.

They tried to restart their lives around the massive hole that had been blown into it; Kurt went to physical therapy and speech therapy provided by the hospital, trying to recover from his physical and mental injuries. There was yelling and frustration, plenty of tears, medical bills and crunching numbers at the garage office and silent Friday night dinners. Kurt got a little mobility back, but the therapy just wasn't working. The doctors and therapists advised that he might be more comfortable at home.

The house was quieter after Kurt was there. Finn wasn't sure if it was just because they felt guilty talking to each other when he couldn't or if it was the lack of noise that Kurt usually brought with him - he didn't listen to music anymore, either on his headphones or the stereo in his room, he didn't watch those musicals that he used to obsess over, and he definitely didn't sing in the shower or while getting dressed anymore. There was some part of him that hadn't woken up yet, he thought. Maybe most of him, because he seemed so much smaller now, being practically carried upstairs to his room by Burt and being fed by Finn's mom when he couldn't seem to hold onto the fork. Finn hoped that Kurt wasn't really awake yet, because he knew his brother would hate that.

Kurt was awake, but he didn't bother with "why me" and he tried not to think about "what now." Most of his thoughts were strange and disjointed. He wondered if his mother felt like he did when she was in a car accident - the confusion and the sudden, unshakable knowledge that he was not going to survive. She'd died on impact - he wondered what that was like, too. He thought about how he couldn't move when he woke up and thought he was paralyzed; he thought about the mass of useless syllables that tumbled out of his mouth. He thought about the frozen smiles on his friend's faces as the realized the enormity of what happened, how they'd looked trapped and afraid. He thought about how trapped he felt, especially at first, like that one night he tried to stand and walk to the dresser for something and couldn't even get to the end of his bed.

There's a peace that a person sometimes feels after a loss. It doesn't heal anything and it doesn't change anything, but it keeps the screaming and tears in a neat little package deep at the bottom of your stomach. It's a weight that keeps you grounded to the bottom of the ocean and far from the currents, a place you can't control, where you might be hurt again. It's a hollowing, deadening sensation, and because Kurt couldn't think of what else to do, he let it happen. His life was out of his reach, so Kurt stayed in his room and faded.

* * *

A/N: So, this is the longer fic I've been planning based on "Talk to Me" from Strange Turn of Events; you don't need to have read that one to understand this one, so no worries. I don't know how long it will be or what the update schedule will be like (because I'm in school right now and school has a way of messing with plans), but I'm really excited to work on it and I hope I can do it justice. Thanks for reading!

Before I forget - the quote at the top is part of a lyric from "What Sarah Said" by Death Cab for Cutie.

(Disclaimer: Glee is owned by Ryan Murphy and FOX. This is meant for entertainment purposes only and not for profit.)


	2. Chapter One - Day One

Chapter One - Day One

_The traffic wasn't bad on the way to the grocery store, and the shopping shouldn't take more than a few minutes, Kurt mused in the small, white car. Most of it could probably wait, but Finn plowed through cereal like an animal, so the trip was a necessity if only to keep his stepbrother from pouting. It was a shame that he couldn't take the Navigator; his Wicked cd was in there, and the only good part of the mindless errand would have been an impromptu concert there and on the way back. Carole's country music selection just wasn't cutting it, and exasperatedly Kurt leaned over to switch on the radio as he slowed to a stop at the red light._

_There wasn't much luck there, either, and he admitted defeat as the light turned and he turned through the intersection._

_These things happen so fast. There was an ear-splitting crunch on Kurt's side of the car and before he could think, before he could register any pain or identify the sound, he was jerked violently to the side. It was dark, then, but his head still felt like it was spinning, tipping precariously to one side and then the other. He reached out an arm to orient himself - but he couldn't move. It was dark and dizzy, and he couldn't move his arms or legs, couldn't even find them, and he wanted to open his mouth and scream for help but his voice was gone, too, and he was trapped-_

Kurt woke with a gasp, staring at his ceiling with wide eyes. He took a few deep breaths and lifted his hand to run through his hair; it only made it about half way before giving out and falling back onto the bed. He groaned – he always forgot about that when he first woke up.

It had been a while since he'd had a dream like that, but it didn't get any easier. When he was in the hospital, they'd varied; sometimes the accident was in front of his house or the school, and sometimes other people were in the car with him – Finn, Rachel, Blaine, once. His first night home, he thought he'd seen his mom in the passenger seat before his dad woke him up. And every time he woke up, he was still trapped.

Kurt glanced over at the glowing, red numbers of the clock by his bed. He had a while before he needed to be up, but he wasn't sure he would be able to go back to sleep. It was a big day; soon, his dad was going to walk through the door, help him down the stairs, and drive him to a place where people could "help" him.

It shouldn't have been a surprise when Burt Hummel came home with another set of pamphlets. Kurt could see the way his dad looked at him, with that shrewd, considering expression that he used when examining the inside of a vehicle, looking for the problem and coming up with solutions. Burt Hummel was a man who fixed things with his hands, and Kurt was certain that he would like nothing more than to be able to identify and correct whatever was wrong with his son in the same way he would with an engine.

The elder Hummel had learned a long time ago that things were rarely so simple with his son.

Kurt Hummel might have lost his voice, but his eyes had said plenty as Burt put the brochures down in front of him at the kitchen table. Kurt hadn't looked at them beyond a cursory glance and before fixing his dad with a belligerent stare, tapping fingertips on the table as if to say, _you're going to do this when I can't make a run for it?_

His dad ignored his expression just like he had for every tantrum and pleading set of puppy eyes when Kurt was small. The brochures had fanned out in an array of color and pictures of smiling people. Kurt looked down on the pamphlet resting on top. There was a woman and a man sitting on a bench beneath a tree, smiling and laughing as though they were experiencing the happiest moment of their lives. Kurt had thought briefly of the bloodstain on the car's seat, the slow treks up and down the stairs that he couldn't take alone, and a bouquet of red and yellow roses. He wondered if either of the people in the picture ever had a minute that changed everything about their lives.

"It doesn't matter which one you pick, Kurt," his dad had told him. "Whichever one you like the best, it doesn't matter to me. But you have to do something, kiddo. You have too much life left in front of you for me to let you just give up."

And Kurt couldn't argue with that – had a hard time arguing about anything with his dad, lately – so they spent an hour looking at the pamphlets. Kurt eliminated most of them quickly, and even though his dad insisted on at least a visit before ruling all of them out, Kurt had pretty much decided on one before he left the table. The brochure was straightforward without any of the pretty pictures or language of the others. It didn't make any grand promises, which was exactly what Kurt wanted if he had to go through with this. St. Anne's Rehabilitation and Recovery Center was nice enough for a place with "rehab" in the name, and that morning and every morning until they "fixed" him, he was expected at eight-thirty to start his therapy.

Kurt could just make out the sound of Finn stumbling up from bed down the hall. It always sounded like he'd fallen out of bed. On a normal morning, Kurt would make a comment about making sure he didn't fall headfirst down the stairs as he passed his stepbrother's room for breakfast. Instead, he waited for his dad to come and help him down. By the time Kurt was at the kitchen table Finn had already gotten through shoveling half of his monstrous bowl of cereal down his throat. "Mornin' bro," he managed to articulate around the food still in his mouth, and Kurt nodded at him, as much of a reply as he was going to get.

Smiling, Carole walked over with a bowl of warm oatmeal and pulled a chair closer to him. "Good morning, sweetie," she said brightly. Wide-eyed, Finn glanced between his mom, the bowl of oatmeal, and his own bowl of cereal and, like every morning, decided that the extra food wasn't worth it and made a hasty escape.

Kurt sighed softly; Finn tried, but he'd never been able to sit through breakfast. As Carole fed him she chatted about how it was a big day and how she was so proud of him for giving it his best, and Kurt did his best to nod around the circuit of the spoon. He hated being fed, but it was that or starve since gripping a utensil was now beyond his capabilities.

_That's what St. Anne's is for,_ he thought as he ate. _Potentially._

"Unlikely to regain adequate mobility" was one of the first things the doctor said after Kurt woke up, followed shortly by "not a very good chance of speech recovery, either." They could be wrong; that was what everyone was fixated on, the possibility that the doctors were wrong. Kurt had never seen a group of people so preoccupied with the incompetence of a medical professional before.

Slowly, with no small amount of help, Kurt brushed his teeth and got dressed. He didn't bother much with his hair or skin; too much effort for too little result. His dad helped him out to the car. _Day one,_ Kurt thought to himself as the car door slammed.

~0~0~0~

The funniest part of the whole thing, Sebastian decided while stripping yet another bed, was that they were calling it "volunteer community service" to everyone working at St. Anne's as though he had some huge reserve of enthusiasm hidden behind his scowl and muttered curses. The nurses liked to gossip, and Sebastian knew how much they'd caught on to by the pieces of conversation he overheard behind his back. The spoiled Smythe kid had gotten himself in trouble with the law, and daddy was taking care of it.

He shrugged off the gossip because that was exactly how it happened; he went to a party just like all of the countless parties he'd been to before, and at some point in the evening, the police had been called. Sebastian didn't remember seeing any police there, but he didn't remember how he got home after waking up in his bed, so he probably wasn't the most reliable witness. Whatever it was, he wasn't involved; he went, he got wasted, he fucked someone, and he tried to drown out unnecessary noise while nursing the inevitable hangover in the morning.

Someone must have called the house before he woke up, because his father was waiting for him at the foot of his bed when he finally came out of his temporary coma. He accused Sebastian of wasting his life which was thrown back in accusations that Sebastian's life wasn't the true concern in the face of coming elections and reputations to be maintained.

What all of the screaming and shouting both in Sebastian's bedroom and Mr. Smythe's office amounted to was that his father's mouth hardened into that telling, severe line, and in the next moment he was on the phone, talking to some old contact of his about St. Anne's. Sebastian didn't ask what was going to be done about the investigation. He didn't have to; it was understood in the Smythe household that any scandal would be taken care of quickly and efficiently by the family patriarch. As far as anyone knew - officially, that was, on-record - their family was nearly pristine. They were a model family in their huge, empty house.

Sebastian was left to uphold the family honor through enforced labor that was only voluntary in the sense that he'd opted for that instead of being cut off completely, which was what Mr. Smythe had threatened at great volume several times that morning. Sebastian didn't really believe it, but his car had been taken away, so he was limited on options unless he wanted to make a break for it on foot. He was stuck doing laundry and mopping floors every afternoon after school and most of the weekend. It was not how he'd planned to spend his own time, and he was not going to pretend that he was happy about it.

He was stripping another bed in a long line of laundry when his phone vibrated in his pocket. On the screen was a picture of a dark-haired girl with green eyes and a number of piercings, sticking her tongue out at him. He sighed and answered, knowing that ignoring her would be useless. "Yeah, Vi?"

"Hello there, my criminal of a baby brother. Are you servicing the community to the best of your ability? I suspect not, since you're talking to me while on the job."

"Is there anything you actually need?" It was a fair question, since she'd called him periodically on his first week just to rub it in. _I'm at the salon right now, Sebby. I texted you a picture of the wonderful bowl of ice cream I just ate, did you get it? The weather is beautiful today. Kind of makes you want to gather together a group of your closest friends in blazers and sing in harmony, doesn't it?_

"Only to inform you that I'm breaking you out. Drew's coming over for the weekend, and so all Smythe family members must be present and accounted for, as per tradition."

Sebastian tossed the sheet he was holding into the basket with a more force than necessary.

Vi, as always, could sense her brother's frustration over the phone. "Yes yes, he's absolutely infuriating, being all successful and shit. How dare he, right?"

"I hate you."

"Hey, I willingly came to spring you in your car-less state. That should move me up at least two points on the 'awesome big sister' scale."

"Maybe half a point," Sebastian conceded as he dropped off the basket in the laundry room and went to find an elevator. At least with her he could spend the whole ride home complaining and not get a lecture for it.

"I'll be waiting for you in the lobby. Hurry it up, we have to stop and get groceries for dinner, which means two trips to the store for me because Mom always forgets something."

"Yeah, yeah, I'm almost there," he told her, getting off of the elevator at the first floor. This was the part of the recovery center that didn't intimately resemble a hospital; the entire floor was painted blue instead of white and some of the rooms, as well as the lobby, had carpeting - which was an absolute bitch to push wheelchairs over, as he knew from experience.

He was just passing the windowed wall of the cafeteria when he glanced by and thought he saw someone familiar. He hesitated for an instant, taking in a flop of chestnut hair and slumped shoulders before Vi was making some snide comment in his ear over the phone and he was rushing for the entrance again before she made a scene.

He didn't think about the almost-encounter again until the next week, when he saw one of the nurses struggling to push a wheelchair over a carpeted area. Sebastian rolled his eyes; whoever designed this place was an idiot. The asshole in the chair was doing absolutely nothing to help, either. _He'd better be brain-dead or some shit, because if this is some entitlement thing he can just stay there._

He walked around to the front of the chair to attempt to work it loose when he realized that the face of the patient looked familiar. "Kurt Hummel," he said, half in disbelief, followed by "You look like _shit_. Did you get hit by a train or something?"

It was the wrong thing to say - _and shit, of course it was the wrong thing to say, Hummel was in a wheelchair for fuck's sake_ - and Kurt's jaw clenched shut with an audible snap. There was a momentary silence while Sebastian tried to think of what he was supposed to say after a slip like that; he didn't come up with much. As the silence dragged on and it became clear that the incident was slowly transforming into an Incident, Sebastian decided that whatever Kurt Hummel's problems were, they weren't his business. Hummel knew how Sebastian was - this wasn't the first time he'd mortally offended the other boy - and if he didn't expect offensive things from Sebastian by now, then he was clearly not as bright as his comebacks suggested. Making sure his expression was clear and level, he freed the chair from where it had gotten caught on the carpet and walked back to the elevator before Hummel could make some snide remark.

That might have been the end of it, had Kurt not kept getting caught in the carpet, somehow always when Sebastian was around. It wasn't planned - Hummel always looked like he'd seen something particularly nasty and the nurse was always different, but Sebastian felt as though someone was playing a cruel trick on him. He didn't want to think about how wrong it felt for someone his age to be in a place like St. Anne's, but Hummel's constant presence made the thought impossible to avoid. He might've even felt sorry for the guy, but every time they crossed paths, Kurt refused to speak to him. There were no comments, no belittling or names, just stoic silence from the only person who'd ever managed to keep up with Sebastian in insults. It added to the wrongness of everything. It also added to the frustration that built every time he saw Hummel, a sensation that he couldn't explain beyond the idea that the boy should be at the Lima Bean where he practically always was, sipping on a mocha with his boyfriend.

So when Sebastian ended up on the first floor again and a vaguely familiar nurse hurried over looking distressed, he was pretty sure he knew what the problem was and also what his day was going to be like as a result.

It wasn't quite what he'd thought.

After some argument about how it was not appropriate and that he wasn't supposed to interact that much with the patients, Sebastian was standing in front of Kurt with a spoon in his hand. The nurse was certain that Burt Hummel would track her down personally if Kurt went home without lunch again, and she was under the mistaken impression that Sebastian cared about the situation. She was unexpectedly forceful.

Now Hummel was staring belligerently up at him, and Sebastian wasn't sure what to do short of forcing the boy's mouth open and shoving the food inside. Hummel would probably choke to death just to spite him.

"The nurse said you haven't been eating," he said as Kurt continued to glare, "and for some reason they thought I'd do a better job of convincing you. So here." He sat down, scooped up whatever the cafeteria was passing off as food that day, and held it in the general direction of Hummel's mouth. Hummel looked down his nose at the spoon and then at Sebastian with an eyebrow raised. His expression spoke volumes, but mostly just said "_hell no_."

"You have to eat," Sebastian insisted, holding the spoon a little closer. Hummel turned his head to the side and Sebastian groaned in frustration. "It's not a big deal, all you have to do is open your mouth and chew. Easy." Kurt didn't move.

The wheedling and bargaining continued, only adding to that strange, uncomfortable frustration, until Sebastian finally snapped and threw the spoon down in anger, clattering and sending food flying as well as attracting the attention of the entire cafeteria. "You don't want my help? You think you can do this on your own? Fine, great! Why don't you stop wasting everyone's time and feed your own damn self, then!" He motioned to the spoon lying in the middle of the table.

Kurt looked between Sebastian and the utensil, and reached a hesitant hand out towards it. He managed to rest his hand on top, but when his fingers went to close around it, they only twitched and fell still. Sebastian watched a flurry of emotions cross Kurt's face, determination quickly giving way to doubt and frustration, and he scooted his chair a little closer. Silently, Sebastian picked Kurt's hand up and returned it to the boy's lap. When he held out the spoon again, Kurt opened his mouth but he wouldn't look Sebastian in the eye.

After lunch Sebastian brought Kurt to his next appointment, with someone named Dr. Tanner in Room 206. When they reached the office, Sebastian couldn't help but glance at the placard - _Dr. Tanner, Speech Therapist_. He stared at the writing on the door for a moment and abruptly turned and walked back down the hall, not sparing a glance behind him for the boy watching him leave.

* * *

A/N: WELL I'M ALIVE. Sorry this is so late - I wish I could say that it'll never ever happen again, but school is still going strong and it takes my time away from me and tears it into confetti in front of my face while I sob bitter tears, so I'm making no promises. Thanks for your patience and not giving up on me! :D

(Disclaimer: Glee belongs to Ryan Murphy and FOX. This story is meant for entertainment purposes only and not for profit.)


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